Beauty is inherently political.

This week’s reading discussed at large the issues behind cosmetic surgery in Brazil and South Korea. It was easy to distance as merely a “it’s them, not us” concept and idea — obviously, cosmetic surgery exists here but the problem regarding it is overseas.

This idea is exactly what Professor Lee seeks to critique in “Beauty Between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem”: the reason people in other nations look to go under the knife and emerge with a new, better body is a result of western aesthetic imperialism — through increased globalization and the financial hegemony of the United States, the idea of a “beautiful” woman is one that was decided by the western world.

Ironically, the opposite has already been in place as well. It’s interesting to think of how Asian bodies try to conform to looking more Caucasian — wider eyes, thinner noses, lighter skin when the Western world still exoticizes and finds fascination in the Asian subject. “Yellow fever” is a term heard relatively often in Western society, and paints a different image of how Asianness exists in social valuations. The question to pose from this is relatively simple: how is it that Western society can value and fetishize the unique aspects of Asianness while simultaneously pushing an aesthetic of whiteness of them?

Years ago, I watched a documentary titled Seeking Asian Female. This documentary, narrated by filmmaker Debbie Lum, told the story of a older white man named Steven living in California and how he met a Chinese woman named Sandy online, soon getting engaged and moving in together. Throughout the film, we see them go through a number of relationship troubles, all with Lum translating in between them, the most prominent of which involves Sandy finding images of Steven’s (also Chinese) ex.

Though this movie ends with a relatively uplifting note, noting that there may exist true love between 60 year old Steven and 30 year old Sandy and accusations of yellow fever might not matter, the consistent fetishization still leaves a sour note in that it finishes with the idea that Sandy’s humanness has trumped Steven’s vision of only loving women for how Chinese they look. Sandy then “westernizes,” learns English proficiently on her own, and settles down happily with Steven. It’s this ending that erases the fetishization of Asianness that had existed the whole movie.

The relevance of this film, besides being an interesting watch if you have an hour and a half to spare, is that it is a perfect showing of how Asianness is desired and fetishized as something to be had. To contrast, cosmetic surgery to emulate whiteness then exists to reaffirm a sense of innate worthiness in Asian women. The desirability of an Asian look, especially in women, is something that necessitates remaining passive: simply as an object to be seen or a wife to do chores, as opposed to having any sort of independent autonomy. Such agency is reserved for the Western world, where the value distribution among such ideas of beauty is one that travels more than skin deep. Asian women can remain as is and be valued passively as objects, but a Caucasian look gives them value as people, leaving us with an interesting look as to how transnational identities play a role in such popularized beauty structures.

Related

kwang1892

6 thoughts on “Week 14: Emulating whiteness and “yellow fever””

You bring up an interesting point in your post when you say that the western world almost demands a certain assimilation through beauty standards from Asian women, and yet at the same time their preexisting features that signal their difference from white women are what make them fetishized in the west. I agree with this sentiment and it makes me wonder why the west requires this effort to look more Caucasian from Asian women, while simultaneously celebrating and exploiting the inherent differences between the groups. It’s almost as if the western world can only handle a certain level of difference before it is seen as unrelatable or threatening. In another way it’s almost like the west needs validation from other countries that they are trying to look like this certain unobtainable white standard and once that effort is put in the white people can go onto the next step of fetishizing and exploiting their natural beauty, features and culture. I wonder what can be done to resolve this need for validation in the west, perhaps white people can stop claiming to be the most beautiful people in the world and forcing countries outside of this area to conform to this whitewashed look, maybe that’s the first step.

I think the reason for why are some western people obsessed with Asian looks while the western aesthetic standards are the beauty standards for plastic surgery industry in Asia is that everyone always wants what they can’t have and that beauty standard go across all races, not just between white and Asian people. This can also apply to white people’s beauty standard, why do white people like to tan themselves and consider girls with full lips and big butts to be attractive? On the other hand, why do black women have weaves and why do many of them like to have straight hair? Asians too, as you mentioned, like to have doll-looking eyes, tall noses, and fair skin color. However, although I can’t speak for everyone, I believe that most of the people who has plastic surgery done were thinking “oh I want to look more black/white/Asian.” I think that the aesthetic standard among races has just influenced one another throughout the history. For example, one of my family member who has had double eyelid surgery done on her was not thinking that she wants to look more caucasian, in fact, she just wants to look like a pretty Asian.

I am fascinated by the concept of attempting to reclaim personhood through emulating caucasian features. I feel that there is so much focus on “attractiveness” when speaking of cosmetic surgery, that we forget what power is bestowed by a certain type of attractiveness and why. “Asian” can be attractive, yes, but only as a fetish. An aspiration to look more white is not simply an aspiration to look more attractive, but to begin to level a playing field where white features are afforded certain privileges–in this case, the privilege of being seen as a person. The true power of conventional beauty, or conforming to a standardized beauty, is that you become aesthetically legible to those around you as having certain positive attributes. Beauty is good, beauty is white. In this case, beauty can be thought of as a tool one reappropriates from the oppressors in order to reclaim one’s personhood. And yet, in conforming to this standard, there is an inherent prioritization of standard, caucasian features of beauty over the features of people of color. Thus, is it truly possible to transcend oppression by, in essence, submitting to an aesthetic racial hierarchy by way of changing one’s physical appearance to match racialized beauty norms? -Laila

This is an interesting argument, and one that speaks to the complexities in the perspectives of women of color regarding plastic surgery. For many women of color interested in cosmetic plastic surgery, it often isn’t “whiteness” that they feel they want to emulate, but rather a notion of power and modernity (which, as we’ve learned from our class readings, is tied into whiteness due to the global power of Western European and white American beauty ideals). I’ve noticed this desire for power and upward mobility in the way my mom has talked about plastic surgery in the past. She’s against nearly all forms of body modification, so she’s never suggested that I should get plastic surgery, or that she wants plastic surgery for herself. But she has said that Filipinas who undergo plastic surgery “just want to look like the movie stars,” or like the beautifully styled actresses in Filipino TV dramas. Plastic surgery gets conflated not with whiteness, or with improved well being, but rather with financial and career-related success. Plus, in the “alternatives” to plastic surgery that she’d try on my brother and I during our childhoods, such as pinching the bridge of our nose every night to make it less broad, she never told us that she did this so that we’d look more like white kids. She’d point again to the Filipino TV and movie actors.

I believe the sexual fetishization of Asian women goes hand in hand with the emasculation of Asian men, especially when considering the history of exploited Asian labour in America. The differential inclusion of importing cheap Asian labour without wanting the actual people and culture is evident in the history of the United States where Chinese labour was imported for exploitation at the same time the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. The fetishization of Asian women and the emasculation of Asian men makes them passive and non-threatening to masculine white power. Fetishization and emasculation both efface the three dimensional humanity of individuals to make them into flat racial caricatures upon whom white America’s ideas of what Asianness should be are projected.

Hey! I love your comment about how it goes both ways—white people appropriating and fetishizing Asian looks, while Asian individuals feel pushed to conform to western standards. I’m a huge poetry fan, and I remember a few years back there was an (obviously understandable) uproar online when it revealed that an acclaimed poet known as Yi-Fen Chou was actually a white man named Michael Derrick Hudson. Jenny Zhang, an Asian American female writer, wrote a poignant piece that circulated about yellow face in the literary world. Zhang discusses the ways in which white writers openly envy her position as a woman of color but, though they claim all her success in her field is due to her race, they still prioritize the voice of a white man trying to claim a Chinese American identity that is not his. This, to me, is a perfect example of the question you pose.

I’m also sharing a link to the article below – it’s well worth the read:

Search

Search for:

Text Widget

This is a text widget, which allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.